


How did you two get together?

by BarPurple



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Sex Toys, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-12 05:50:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19222915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: It all started with an annoying letting agent, and a haul of sex toys.





	1. Chapter 1

Belle’s bland face lasted until the letting agent had left. The moment the front door closed she broke into a wide grin. As she turned around and saw the vast array of sex toys littered with casual abandon around her apartment, the grin turned to giggles.

It had been a ridiculous plan, petty in the extreme, but it had been worth it just for the look on the letting agent’s face. And if it stopped them wanting to photograph her entire apartment every inspection then all the better.

As she started to gather up the dildos and butt plugs she wondered who the hell the landlord was, and how uptight they had to be to insist on such frequent updates on the condition of their rental properties. She wouldn’t have minded if the photos were just of any problem areas, but when they covered everything, including all of her possessions, (and at one point the undies she’d forgotten she had on an airer), she got annoyed. It was an invasion of her privacy and she wasn’t going to accept it.

Her polite complaints to the letting agent had been ignored twice and then got her a passive aggressive letter that boiled down to ‘if you don’t like it, move out’. In had taken her a month to come up with this plan. Thank god Ruby worked at Promises Promises and was willing to lend her some display models of the wilder side of adult toys. There was no way Belle would have spent fifty dollars on a nine inch purple dildo with suction cup base, or thirty bucks on a pleasure-for-him butt plug, no matter how annoyed she was with ridiculous policies.

Once everything was boxed up, she sent a text to Ruby to say thank you again and let her know she could pick the box up tomorrow. Ruby had laughed herself silly about Belle’s plan, after she’d kicked herself for not thinking of it herself. They rented from the same letting agent after all, according to Ruby everyone in town did.

“It’ll have more impact coming from you, Belle, the man’d expect me to have this stuff at home.”

If word got around about this then her sweet and innocent librarian image would be in tatters. Which really wasn’t a problem because Belle thought of herself more as an eclectic guide on the journey of discovery kinda of librarian anyway. Her phone bleeped with a text from Ruby asking her if there was anything she fancied keeping from the 'haul of horny’, which had Belle laughing as she headed for the shower.

“Maybe one day soon, Rubes.”

She had to get ready for her standing chess date with Gold. Today might be the day that their flirting moved up a gear. Then again Gold seemed happy to take things slow. Very slow. On second thought perhaps she should ask Ruby about that nice looking rabbit. Nothing wrong with Gold wanting slow, but a girl had needs.

-o0o-

Gold grumbled as he read the sender of the email’s that had just made his computer ping. Every quarter he told himself he was going to switch the agency that handled his properties, and every quarter he ended up forgetting to actually do anything about it until the inspection emails arrived again. Idiot. Now he had to look through images that showed more of his tenants’ lives than he really wanted to see. He’d complained, loudly several dozen times. All the agents needed to do was inform him of damage or potential repairs, but they just parroted 'our policy is..’ at him, and even more annoyingly, 'our contract states…’. Like he’d never written a real contract. If he wanted to he could tangle them up in legal knots the like of which would make Gordian wince.

“I miss Dove.”

He’d started using the agency three years ago because of the accident that had broken his knackered ankle. The impact from the fall had twisted the plates and pins that had been in place since he’d first broken the damn thing and the surgery to fix that mess, and the resulting infection, and the recouperation had laid him up for months. Dove had offered to return to assist him, but Gold wasn’t going to let the man walk away from the job of his dreams to collect rents in Storybrooke, Maine. So, letting agency made sense.

And, in fairness, he’d gotten to like not chasing rents, and arranging for repairs. Add to that the townsfolk had sort of forgotten that he was their landlord now they had to deal with the agency. Sure he’d never be the town’s most beloved citizen, but these days he was treated with a mild indifference rather than abject terror. He even had his suspicions that the dire warnings of the Beast of Storybrooke had been dropped from the town’s welcome wagon.

He glanced at the clock and decided he had time to skim through the important emails before he needed to get ready for Belle and their chess date. He could call it a date in his head. There was nothing romantic about their twice weekly get togethers; chess on Tuesdays and films and take out on Fridays. Just friends spending time together, as much as he might dream of it being romantic, it wasn’t, and it had been so long since he’d had a friend he wasn’t going to fuck this up by letting his soppy-love-sick heart make Belle uncomfortable.

Belle was one of the reasons he’d figured that the locals were no longer warning every newcomer away from him. She’d arrived in town a year and a half ago and three months later they had become friends. If Dove had still been in town he might have admitted to him that he’d fallen head over heels with Belle about seventy one hours after she’d first beaten his arse at chess. To be fair Dove probably had worked that out already, Gold did exchange regular emails with him, and Belle was frequently mentioned.

He gave his head a shake and focused on the task at hand. Emails from annoying letting agents, who he was going to fire and replace for real this time.

“Deep breath. And here we go.”

He opened his email client and swore. The agency had felt the need to flag one email and title it, all in capitals, as urgent.

“Bet it’s the guttering at Granny’s.”

Gold clicked on the attached image.

“What the…”

That was not Granny’s. That was Belle’s flat, that was Belle’s chair and that was gold butt plug.

“Oh fuck…”


	2. Chapter 2

Gold's hands were trembling as he clicked through the photos from the letting agent. Belle's flat was covered in sex toys. His first thought was blank shock. The second was wow. The third thought was slightly more practical; “What the hell?”

The letting agent always informed tenants of inspections, they had to it was law so, Belle would have been expecting them and their bloody camera. She'd never struck him as the exhibitionist sort, and this quite up there. Okay, she'd not plastered pictures of, wow that was a big dildo suck to the TV, erm her collection all over town, but she knew the staff at the agency would see these. She knew that as her landlord he would see these.

“Oh fuck.”

Gold suddenly felt sick. Had he been too obvious in his crush on Belle? Had he made her feel uncomfortable? Was this her way of telling him to back off. That she had a boyfriend? Who ever he was, he was a lucky bastard to have Belle's affections. Did they play with that gold butt plug together?

He swore loudly and twisted his chair away from the computer. He was not going to think about Belle's hands, slicking up any version of his favourite sex toy. Too late, the image was there as quickly as he'd told himself not to think of it. His cock twitched and he growled in frustration. His fingers dug into his scalp as he pulled at his hair. His own butt plug was the exact same model, but a discreet black, and lay in the drawer of his night-stand. Fucking hell he was getting hard. This was not good, not good at all. He didn't use his toy often, and he'd done his bloody best not to think about Belle when he did. It didn't feel right to think of his friend while he was shaking hands with the bishop. Apart from one or two fleeting thoughts he'd kept Belle out of his mental porno reel; that was going to be im-fucking-possible from now on.

“Why did it have to be gold?”

Gold was his colour, his damn name! True he was a bit more subtle in his references; his tooth, his cane handle, cufflinks, tie pin, okay maybe not that subtle. He'd not even glanced at the gold option, now he wouldn't be able to look at his boring black one without thinking the gold would be so much better, and even more-so if it were Belle's delicate fingers lifting it from the night-stand drawer. . .

“Bugger.”

He sounded like a whiny kid. Okay, there had to be a logical explanation for why Belle had done this. He glanced back at the photos. Everything from butt plug to vibrators were prominently displayed. Impractically displayed, in fact, there was no way Belle would block access to her books with a riding crop like that. He glanced at the dildo stuck to the centre of the TV screen, yup totally impractical. He tilted his head and considered that purple dong, that thing had to be about nine inches long. How? How did that work? Belle was tiny and that thing was a monster. His gutter brain helpfully pointed out that you couldn't just dive in with something that size, there would have to be lots of long and loving preparation, with fingers and tongue...

“Not helping!”

Right. Focus. These were the quarterly photos from the letting agents. Right. Was that important? Probably. Oh, there was a message with the photos, made sense since they were flagged as urgent.

“Mr Gold, after events at blah blah blah we have opted to revise our photo documentation of properties, ya-da-ya-da, will only document damages, this updates our current...”

Gold started to chuckle, and within seconds he was laughing out loud.

“Oh Belle, you amazing person.”

Belle's intelligence never ceased to astound and impress him. She could kick his arse at chess, debate literature and films with him. She challenged him, and he was rediscovering his interest in many things because of her way of looking at them offered him a new perspective. She'd even talked him into watching films of book adaptations, something he'd always looked down on before. They had agreed to differ on musicals, because no matter how he tried people bursting into song made him cringe.

And now Belle had done the impossible and made the stubborn letting agency change it's rigid and annoying policy, something Gold hadn't managed to do in three years. He felt a bit of a prat for jumping to the conclusion this had something to do with him, but all things considered he could be forgiven a moment of egocentric madness. It wasn't every day you were surprised with images of sex toys in a business email. After a moment of mulling he decided he didn't have to feel too guilty for the images those toys had conjured up of Belle, after all sex toys were supposed to cause that sort of response. His logic was a bit dodgy, but he decided he could dwell on that later.

Belle was due to arrive in a few minutes. He couldn't wait to tell how amazing he thought her cunning plan had been, and ask her where she'd gotten such a haul of stuff from. Now his brain was working properly again he had a suspicion that Ruby Lucas had helped her out, she worked at the town's one and only adult shop after all.

Not five minutes later Belle rapped at the French doors and let herself in. He'd made a joke months ago that since they doors were named for her she should use them. She'd seen right through his poor attempt at humour, but laughed along with him. His leg had been causing him hell that day and getting up to open the front door when she knocked had proved a bad idea. From that day on Belle had let herself into his home.

“Evening, Gold.”

“Hello Belle, you are amazing.”

She returned his wide grin; “Yes, I am. Why particularly?”

He turned the computer monitor so she could see the photos. Belle stepped across the room and suddenly tensed when she recognized her apartment. Her smile dropped into a frown so quickly Gold thought he'd heard the muscles shift.

“How did you get those?”

Gold's grin faltered, but valiantly tried to hold on; “The letting agent sent them to me.”

“Why? You don't practise law any more!”

Now he was really confused; “No I don't, haven't for years, what's that got to do with it?”

Belle huffed, her voice rose as she got more frustrated; “Why else would they send them to you unless they want an legal opinion? Are they planning on suing me for something?”

Gold was lost, and Belle was upset. A strange thought occurred to him, it was ridiculous, but it was all he had to try and understand what was going on.

“Belle? You do know I'm your landlord, right?”

“You're what?”


End file.
